Dear 1A,
I’m the “Poncho” from the Monday, February 12th episode. Thanks for putting me on the air! I wouldn’t have known except a friend caught it on her way to school. After hearing my edited comment, I didn’t quite like how I sounded and hope to take a chance to clarify.
As I said, I oppose continued military support for the proxy war in Ukraine, and I call on the United States to seek a just negotiated peace in the conflict. The idea of a Ukrainian “total victory”, where the 1991 borders are re-established and Russia is pushed out of all the oblasts and Crimea, is frankly an absurd pipe dream. Continuing the conflict now will only result in more bodies, particularly Ukrainian bodies, piling up while increasing the risk every day of a shooting war between the two largest nuclear powers on the planet.
(I would also note that the extent to which the United States has offered a “diplomatic offramp” to this conflict was not at all rooted in a realistic expectation of a peace deal. Their “offer” was something that they knew would be unacceptable to the Kremlin, and only served as window-dressing, a justification for continuing the conflict. We made a “diplomatic offer,” but not a reasonable one offered in good faith.)
As someone on the political Left, it’s surprising and discouraging to me that many progressives have abandoned their previous skepticism when it comes to military adventurism.
In Washington, I can’t think of a single Democrat off the top of my head who takes a more historic and structural look at the conflict in Ukraine, and a more realistic analysis on what can be achieved and why states might act the way they do. It seems that the Democratic line (along with the line of pro-Ukraine Republicans like Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell) is primarily rooted in the “indispensable nation” mythology that believes America is destined to be the world leader, an expanded Monroe Doctrine aimed at global military supremacy and the preservation of the “liberal international order” with the US at the top.
The flip side of this mythology, at least in Ukraine, is the “madman thesis.” The notion is that Putin is simply a Bad Guy, and any attempt at understanding the legitimate concerns of the Russian Federation or how things developed to this point beyond Putin’s deep-seeded criminality is an exercise in equivocation. It’s reminiscent of the Bush doctrine: “You’re with us or you’re with the terrorists.” NATO since the fall of the Soviet Union has primarily been aimed at preventing Russia from ever being a potential geopolitical competitor to the United States, but in doing so, they’ve guaranteed a backlash from an increasingly encircled and isolated country. Pointing out the fact that most countries, including the United States, wouldn’t take this lying down is seen as being a stooge, a puppet for Putin and apologist for the invasion.
Even Congressional Democrats with long records of opposition to US military policy, figures like Barbara Lee, have gone all in on the conflict (although she and others courageously spoke out against sending cluster munitions to Ukraine, a wildly irresponsible policy that was certain to increase human suffering in the conflict).
Among rank and file Democrats I speak to, however, it tends to be a much more gut level response. Support for continued military aid to Ukraine seems to primarily be tied to liberals who think Putin is responsible for the Presidency of Donald Trump, an idea so odious to them that they’re supporting a foreign policy that is bringing us dangerously close to World War Three in Europe.
When I said “foreign policy was becoming partisan,” I didn’t mean that having bipartisan unity on foreign policy is always a good thing. Look at the bipartisan support for the catastrophic War in Iraq, simultaneously used as a partisan cudgel of the Republicans. Party politics and foreign policy have always had sticking points. Even today, it seems much of “MAGA” foreign policy is rooted in trolling liberals with inflammatory rhetoric.
Because it’s clear that Trump isn’t a dove; we had four long years of his willingness to use military force and bullying, provocative tactics to force his way through. Even when he did make some headway, like with the Abraham Accords, it’s always outweighed by his far more hawkish moves, like withdrawing from the Iranian nuclear agreement or moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem or calling to ban all Muslim immigration, all of which were meant to enrage liberals.
The point being, there has long been a bipartisan agreement on the necessity of US military interventionism abroad, only sometimes they disagree on exactly where it should be aimed, too often rooted in political bickering. The problem is, this aggressive posture doesn’t actually make us more safe; it makes us less safe, and more hated. The blowback from the failures of our interventionism has made the world less safe.
I think a good rule of thumb is: American lives and American treasure should not be wasted in military campaigns where American security is not directly threatened. Or, as Thomas Jefferson said, “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.” While this is derided as “right wing extremism” (even when coming from a leftist such as myself), in reality it’s just common sense. But it requires moving away from the “American Century” myth of the United States as destined to be the world’s policeman and instead following a sober, realistic, restrained, prudent foreign policy.